LOVE the “Get out of Diet free card. I can’t think of what card I could use today, but I do remember playing monolopy with a mixture of excitement and abstract terror as a child. I have a board game blind spot and can never grasp them or their rules however grindingly simple. I used to rely on silly voices, impressions and a whoopee cushion to distract adults from noticing I was board game stupid, and therefore a pointless child. 5 year old kids can still beat me everytime and I’m left baffled. I’ve always been like this, and can’t even manage a jigsaw without utter confusion and boiling hot tears of angst. I can play Scrabble, but for everything else, I’m a wreck.

Haha I love that card! And i could use it. I’ve gotten away from feeling guilty about “calories” but instead I’ve shifted it to feeling guilty about processed food, sodium, and carbs. And meat/dairy, too, come to think about it. I have a bad habit of feeling like just because someone follows a certain way of eating that I’m a bad person if I don’t too. I have to remember it’s MY life and my body and I get to do what I want with it. And that that’s a good thing!

I need two Monopoly cards: Win Lotto and Get Out of In-Laws’ Easter Weekend for Free.

I hate using that old sawhorse, and I love my in-laws very much, but being in the same house as them… in rural South Carolina… with only one vehicle… as they debate whether or not health care can get the 60 votes for four days… with NO OTHER TOPICS AT ALL… while they drink themselves silly, and I sit around with my cup of tea, wondering when I can sneak out and smoke.

“I have a bad habit of feeling like just because someone follows a certain way of eating that I’m a bad person if I don’t too. I have to remember it’s MY life and my body and I get to do what I want with it. And that that’s a good thing!”

Lindsay, if it makes you feel better, I eat meat (including game meats), full-fat dairy, and processed foods. You can eat like me, if it makes you feel better. Of course, you’ll need to become a coffee snob, bake your cakes and pies from scratch, and avoid Twinkies because while processed foods are fine if you like them, Twinkies are Just Plain Scary to me.

Hey! Can I get someone to land on a property where I have two hotels? Preferably somewhere like Park Place?

@Curvygirl – yeah, I’m in the market for a Chance card as well telling me to stop second-guessing a semi-major life decision that won’t even actually come into play for another 14 months, save my money, and focus on the light at the end of the tunnel. And to stop accusing myself of being irresponsible/a bad daughter because I want said semi-major life decision.

I need a “get out of interviewing” card. I also need the “guaranteed good weather when I travel” card. I’ve taken four trips this winter, and manage to hit BAD weather en route and at my destination on all four trips.
I also need the “Shut the F%$# up and stop telling me to wear a girdle” card.

Despite the extreme heteronormality of the Game of Life, I have always loved the weird spinner sound and landing on one space in particular:
Your yacht (!) rams an iceberg, collect umpty gagillion dollars selling ice cubes…
After landing on that, I just enjoy being transgressive with all the little pink and blue pegs.

Get out of Diet Free card is pretty hard to beat, though I do like the whole get out of Debt Free sentiment as well.

Any other vegetarians out there with this strange burden?
I have been veggie for over 25 years, and fat most of that time. In general, folks I know in a casual way don’t even notice I’m veggie. I go out of my way not to proselytize, and heck, my husband hunts….I figure eating non native species he interacts with directly is as sustainable as meat is gonna get. So- why is it that casual acquaintances want to tell me their eating habits when they find out I don’t eat meat??

It’s not in a diet-y sort of way exactly, but has this creepy moral overtone to it. When a co-worker or neighbor or something finds out I am vegetarian, they start confessing their dietary sins or something. “We don’t really eat too much meat at our house anymore. Well, last week we had fish twice. But I suppose we eat chicken pretty regularly-it’s all our daughter will eat. But I really do love pork chops. Guess I can’t help myself….etc. etc.”
It’s like I have become their father confessor. What is this really about?

I don’t know, but it’s always felt very weird to me. I have the discussion and do veggie 101, and tell them they are fine eating whatever feels good to them, but it is still truly strange.

@chutti pen: I’m a pesce-vegetarian and I get the same reaction; it’s so weird. “Oh, we hardly ever eat meat! Maybe three times a week… But never veal!” etc., etc. When I have made NO judgments about anyone, and have merely said what I personally eat. In the least moralistic language I can.

I think it’s similar to how friends of my parents used to react when they learned that I was an English major in college: “Ooh, better watch my grammar around you!” As if the very fact of my existence meant I was obviously going to be sitting in judgment. Bah.

(But since I *am* a grammarian, I may as well add: in U.S. English, periods and commas always go inside quotes; in British English, they go outside unless they are part of the quote. Question marks, exclamation points, semicolons, and colons always go outside unless they’re part of the quote, even in the States.)

@Faith: I second the demand for a “Go Home Early” card. Oh gawd it’s SO SLOW TODAY. And I CANNOT LEAVE. It is FRIDAY and there are MOVIES TO SEE and my boyfriend is ALL BETTER after being sick and OMG lemme outta here *sob*

Ooh! I want a Go to the Movies Free card! Mr. Twistie won one of those last summer in a Star Trek trivia contest at our local movie house, allowing us to go see Star Trek VI for free the next week. Also, he won me a box of Whoppers.

Is there a Get Out of Sick Free card? I’m recovering from neck surgery and my 18 month old son can’t stop throwing up. Seriously, I’m thinking of emptying all the back accounts and running away to St. Croix. Or something.

I could so use a “Get This Baby Out of Me Now” card. I’ve got about a week until my due date, and I am miserable!

Otherwise, a “Get Out of Having to Do Anything Other Than Knit, Read Blogs, and Watch Movies on Netflix Until the Baby is Born” card would be nice. I think I’ve already got that one, though, thanks to a very understanding husband.

I have been fascinated with these completely inappropriate e-cards for some time. Part of it is pure cultural dissonance ( and I am a great fan of Indian English) but part of it is just wrong.
I’ve sent a few of these in jest:

I will take a Get Out of Doing Government Paperwork to Start my New Job Card, please. I am all ready to move and start my job (and get off unemployment BEFORE my benefits run out!) and it’s being held up by visa paperwork. I’d really like to get to Holland before tulip season! I could also use a Bank Error in my Favor or a Get Out of Paying the Mortgage card.

@chutti pen – I play the Pirates of the Caribbean Game of Life with my nieces – we say “Arrgh” a lot, collect treasure and mascots, and try to avoid the Kraken. When you do something mean to another player like taking their ship you can just smile and say “pirate!” – very liberating. And yes, the spinner is strangely satisfying.

I will take a Get Out of Cleaning My Hellhole, I mean, Apartment Card, please.

I’d like a “Get an extra semester of TAship support free” card. But alas, my chair is adamant about offering me no more support after next year, despite being less than the national average time-to-completion in my field (and, hello, my first semester was completely thrown off by Katrina, plus let’s not even talk about the complete lack of departmental research support for grad students! Who me, bitter and panicky?). So, barring the TAship I’d take a Chance card saying something like “You WILL manage to spend another summer in the field, analyze and write up this and all your existing data, write a dissertation, and apply for dozens of post-docs and jobs, and LAND an awesome post-doc or job, all in the next 14 months” card, please. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be an awesome post-doc or job – in this market, most anything would do.

@ paintmonkey – I live to make you happy! Can that be another monopoly card I can have? “You made everybody happy! Now you get a present!”

@ Kelly – Wait, how are you hosting two birthday parties at your house? Are they simultaneous or one after the other? Sounds very difficult!

@ Carol – Blessings and hope to you and your little one. I hope you both start feeling better soon. And running away to St. Croix (or Trinidad – SO EASY) is always a great exit strategy. Everybody should have an exit strategy – you never know!

@ Chutti Pen – That was so delecious [sic]. Couldn’t help sharing with you.

I’m begging for a “Escape the school budget cuts” card…NYS public schools are in a bad way…6 million dollar shortfall in my district…80-some full-time teachers on the block…and this is just the beginning, with increased class sizes and fewer teaching assistants and trash talk from the community about “greedy” teachers on the way. Loving the kids more than ever, but my face is broken out with hives from stress, and I can’t seem to exercise hard enough to get a good night’s sleep. Part of me wants the budget vote to happen NOW so we get it over with, and most of the rest of me is just dreading all that will entail.

However, one small remaining part of me that is still tasting the amazing peanut butter/chocolate brownie I just finished.

@Krishji
It’s two parties one after the other, but the second one I only have to organize and cook for and all that, as it’s a Unicorn/Pegasus roller skating birthday party (a joint effort for my daughter and my husband’s band’s drummer) at the roller rink!

@ chutti and vidya. I think the “oh you’re a veggie, let me tell you why I’m not” thing is universal. I’ve started to insert into the conversation as early as possible. . .and as nicely as possible, the following question (not a card, but almost as good. . .): “why are you tell me this?”
Not completely reliable, but often reroutes the convo.

Can I get a “Get Out of Thesis Free” card up in here? My advisor gave me a come-to-Jesus this afternoon and I’ve been having a hard time focusing since.

@chutti pen & others – I have a hard time with that because I am explicitly vegetarian because I disagree with most animal farming and slaughter practices. On the other hand, I don’t judge other people for not making that decision because hey, you do what’s best for yourself and your body. On the THIRD hand, when people ask me why I don’t eat meat and I explain, they start to look at me like I’m the Nuremberg Trials*.

1. Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks if it is part of the quotation; outside otherwise.
2. In American English, commas and periods (full stops) go inside whether or not they’re part of the quotation.
3. In British English, a comma can go inside even when it’s not part of the quotation if it is replacing a full stop (period) which is part of the quotation.
4. In British English, if there is no punctuation symbol before the opening quotation mark, closing punctuation always falls outside the closing quotation mark.

Comma replacing full stop: “Let’s have tea,” said Alice.
Full stop as part of the quotation: Alice said, “Let’s have tea.”
Contrived example because it’s nearly 4 am: Alice said “Let’s have tea”.

This is according to my memories of The Right Word at the Right Time, a rather good grammar book published by the Reader’s Digest.

I would take a, “Collect four months’ worth of vitamin D” card. This winter has been the doozy of all doozies as far as lots of snow and no sun–and being on the night shift doesn’t help a whole lot with that, unfortunately. I am so looking forward to sunshine and warmth and outdoors. Many yays and happy thoughts.

Hmmm, this may be waaaaay TMI but I’d like a “Get Out of Painful Orgasms” card. Lately, I literally have an orgasm of purely painful muscular contractions, instead of purely awesome muscular contractions. Like, the worst period cramps evaarrrr. Thanks for being a pal endometriosis. You’re cool. And thanks medical establishment, for offering nothing other than the solution of scoping my tummy and laser blasting those rogue uterine terrorist cells because that “might help”… I’d like certainty with my surgery, thankyouverymuch.

Other than that, I don’t need any other cards. Other than that. One. Thing.

@Kelly- you, me, and my partner, haha- but seriously thank you :) There could be worse things. I have a job after 6 months of unemployment, so it might just be the universe shifting to accommodate the situation…if so, I’ll quit tomorrow to restore the balance of awesome/craptastic to a ratio more in my favor!

Yesterday, I was going to ask for a “Get out of karaoke without embarrassing self” card. But I went to the karaoke party, duly embarrassed myself, and ended up having a wonderful time. I’ve been terrified of singing since I was, like, eight, and the music teacher at my elementary school stopped everyone in the middle of the song and said, “Starling, what in the world are you DOING?!?” So I am terrified of singing. And yet, after embarrassing myself, I managed to get through another half-dozen songs without my hands and voice shaking. You know what? I sounded good. Not professional-singer good, but definitely unpuke-y.

I am almost as messed up about my singing as I ever have been about my body image, to give you an idea, so this is a HUGE OMG WOW thing for me.

I need another card please….. a “Check Your Privledge asshole!” Because if I see just one more facebook photo of that “comicical-oh-so-funny” photo titled “Delicious Cake” I”m going to scream!!! I just haven’t gotten it together to formulate an answer in the comment section that doesn’t start with F and end with U or Off or ….

The photo by-the-by is kinda out of focus to me, but it’s clearly of a fat bride and groom and he’s feeding her cake. Wow—a bride and groom eating wedding cake on their wedding day! How umm….normal? Also, I looked at the photo closely (did a yahoo photo search) and to me it seems the bride is also in a wheelchair.. so it’s not only mockiong fat people but someone who may have a disability as well! Now the whole thing could be photoshopped, I have no idea, but just the idea of the photo being funny offends and pisses me off to no end! Not that I’m trying to dictate what other people should find funny, but I hate the automatic fat=funny and the “jokes” which to me are really sublte hostility.

@Char Lefave I could totally use a “get out of breakup-induced mood swings free” card, and a “get out of crying at the drop of a hat free” as well as a “get out of feeling lonely and weird” card and a “have something to do during spring break” card.

I might tell someone I used to be a vegetarian if they tell me they are, or I might tell them my daughter is one, but I tend to leave moralizing out of it. It wasn’t for me.

I’d also like the “get an early retirement” card. My (welfare caseworker) job is sucking the life out of me and it’s getting worse all the time. They refuse to hire enough people to replace the ones leaving and the economy means more and more people are signing up for welfare benefits so we get bigger and bigger caseloads and more and more backlogged, and instead of hiring bodies, the state shells out money to contractors to come up with computer systems and workflow schemes that do not work for us because said contractors have no idea how welfare works. And the contractors walk away with millions of taxpayer dollars, and the caseworkers are the bad guy. And the clients suffer more than anyone because they’re not getting their benefits.

@buttercup…If I was the great cardmaker in the sky, I’d make a special card for you. I’d make you a “Have a flamboyant and exciting early retirement which actually feels like a permanent life-enhancing holiday” card, just for you.
I never mention I’m a vegetarian normally either – it still seems to make people uncomfortable which is a bit strange. Also, people seem to think it makes me neurotic about food in general – I asked for sugar in my coffee recently and the person said excitedly “God! I’d never have expected you to have sugar in coffee being a vegetarian!”……which rather startled me. You lot would tell me if innocent sugar cubes were having to be slaughtered for my coffee pleasure, wouldnt you?

Paintmonkey: you mean you didn’t know? Oh, God, I’m so sorry! Yes, the factory-farming of sugar cubes, which were meant to be wild and free in their natural habitat (the back of kitchen cabinets) is a truly brutal and distressing phenomenon.

@otherbecky – Holy Shit.I – I – I never knew. My own sugar cubes are able to run wild and free in the cupboard, and can leap over things and observe the other condiments grazing, and I assumed all had this kind of life. Thankyou for your honesty. It pains me to learn this way, but thankyou.

I want a “stop feeling guilty because I am sick” card, or just a “cut yourself at least as much slack as you cut others” card. About the veggie confessions thing, it isnt just food. I avoid alcohol because it’s a migraine trigger,ditto caffine and weed; people assume I am judging them – nope, just really hate pain and nausea.

@annimal: Thank you! I’m feeling much better after having time to myself and not having to pretend that I’m alright around the ex-girlfriend. We’re working on being friends and keeping a little distance for right now.

@femmina: I now have an abundance of “get out of crying at the drop of a hat” cards. Would you like one? :)

@ Carol – My two year old has had one stomach virus so far (knock on wood). Although he passed it on to both of us (yay!), watching him be sick like that was the worst thing I’ve ever been thru. I’m so sorry your kidlet is sick when you need your rest. I hope things are already getting better.

Starling, !! I am the same re: singing karaoke (not in choirs; that’s fine). Always wanted to do it, hardly ever found the courage to get up there because of the BLINDING TERROR. So I carried out a six-month sustained campaign of *making* myself do it every week and the day I got to the point where I could go up first, sober, early in the evening, to do a song I didn’t even really know was seriously one of the greatest triumphs in my life. If I had biopic that would totally be the power montage, I don’t even care what that says about me.

paintmonkey, you are funny as fuck. Your boardgame-fail post made me laugh and laugh.

I’d like a “Get Out of Germophobia Free” card please. I was mildly OCD/germophobic before I went travelling and it was getting worse, then I hit India and it went MENTAL. I’ve spent most of the past month crying, shaking and/or refusing to touch surfaces/eat/drink. I’m in New Zealand now and really, really, really hoping it calms back down before I go to Southeast Asia in 6 weeks. It essentially feels like my brain’s been hijacked and I can never really feel safe again. No more please!

Cate: I’ve got a spare at the moment — I may have to ask for it back some day, but currently my biggest health problems are ones that are actually recognized by most people as either being unrelated to weight or, among the slightly more knowledgeable, ones that are fat-correlated in that the disease tends to cause weight gain. So you can have mine on long-term loan.

Speaking of diseases that tend to cause weight gain, anybody got a “Get My Thyroid Glands to Wake the Fuck Up Already” card to spare?

@Other Becky — well, I’m not using my thyroid anymore, but part of it had decided to rebel and form its own sovereign nation, so I don’t think you really want it even though it did work just fine…

@vegetarians — yeah, I get that too. For some reason, the confessions are more fervent when I explain that I eat [very occasional local, sustainable, humanely raised] meat, but not *this* meat, then they were when I didn’t eat meat at all. Similarly awkward confessions result when people find out I wasn’t born Jewish.

Can I have a “Your Bathroom Will Now Be Self-Cleaning” card? And maybe a “Get Out of Snow Free” card? It’s late enough in the year that it wouldn’t be that odd if it didn’t snow anymore, but it still probably will.

“You know, Chutti Pen, there have been times in my life when the thing I wanted most was to send someone a ‘hot and steaming fish’.

Unfortunately, the thought was not always as generous as it might have been.”

There is actually an expression in Swedish that would translate to “getting one’s fishes served hot”*, which also stands for a more hostile than generous thought… :-)

I had a boss once who just assumed that I didn’t eat meat in order to keep my weight down. Even though I would eat cookies and such things with my coffee when there was any, so he might have guessed I had other reasons.

As for the cards, I want a “Get Out Of Having Colds”-card, since I have been having colds on and off for almost the whole winter. When I think I’ve become well, it starts again. It was the same last winter, but I notice it more now when I have a job and have to call in sick often. I’ll go to a doctor soon to find out if I have some kind of deficiency that makes me more susceptible.

(* Or should the plural of “fish” also be “fish”? Hope my English teacher won’t read this…)

@ chutti, vidya and others: pescetarian/ex-vegetarian here, and I totally get the same responses – people either get strangely apologetic, or they go sort of vaguely confrontational and start telling me how they LOVE MEAT and want to eat LOTS OF ANIMALS. Uhm… good for you! Well done! Why is this my business?

On-topic, can I have a Get Out Of Insomnia Free card, please? More than three hours of sleep would be really nice.

Chutti-pen, I was a vegetarian from childhood until my early 20s and have been a pescetarian since then, and I often get the same stuff from people. I assume it’s just because people are generally so insane about food.

I would like a “dairy-free cake on demand” card – the amount of cafes and coffee shops I go to that don’t sell a single cake or pastry or delicious lovely anything I can eat makes my tummy cry inside :'(

Late to the discussion (as my usual)- I would choose a “Get out of boring diet conversation talk free” card. Just once, I’d like to lunch without someone (typically female) pushing around a sad lettuce leaf and talking about calories, carbs, or points.

I pulled both calf muscles from a very steep hike the other day, have indigestion from lunch (good times) and now my hands are recovering from frostnip because it decided to snow today. So maybe a “Get Out of Being a Mess” card?

“get out of wearing corporate attire to work everyday”
and
“get out of a lecture from your boss cause you made a simple human error”
or
“get out of out the house and into a nice long relaxing vacation with your BF”